Email has commonly been used to send messages between different people, or even between different groups of people. In practice, email allows a user to send a message text and potentially include other items as attachments. Not surprisingly, text is often a poor mechanism for communication. While text itself can convey valuable information, text does not often provide sufficient information on a person's tone. Sarcasm, humor, and other items that may readily be apparent when listening to a person are often lost in text, or if included in text must by explicitly added in text, thereby increasing the length of a message and the time needed to read and understand the message.
Email and other similar communication may also not result in a person understanding the received message. In particular, many people are more likely to retain information that is conveyed to them audibly or visually. As a result, a person may read pages of text but may retain little of the information. Moreover, the person sending the message often does not know if the message was read, let alone whether it was understood. For example, email systems now allow a user to send a message that includes a so-called “read receipt.” Upon opening the email, the read receipt may send a message back to the sender indicating that the message was opened. The read receipt does not, however, give the user an idea as to whether or not the recipient read the full message. The sender may therefore be left wondering whether or not the recipient read or understood the message, and often may follow up with a phone call or subsequent email to see if the message was understood. As a result, time may be wasted just to see if information was accurately interpreted or even received.